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The global business environment is changing in ways that Nigeria cannot afford to passively read. What is emerging is not simply a competition between great powers, nor simply a question of market access. This is a reordering of how Africa is positioned within competing trade architectures.
The United States reauthorized the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) only until December 31, 2026, retroactive to September 2025, while China announced zero tariff treatment from May 1, 2026 for imports from 53 African countries with which it has diplomatic relations. Taken together, these moves point to a broader reality: External trade preferences are becoming more fluid, more strategic, and more visibly tied to geopolitical calculus.
For Nigeria, the appropriate response is not to frame this situation as a binary choice between external partners. It would be too limited and strategically useless.
The most important lesson is that trade can no longer be treated as a secondary path alongside diplomacy. It must be approached as one of the fundamental instruments through which the national interest is guaranteed. In a world where market access is shaped by changing preference regimes, tariff recalibration, and broader geoeconomic competition, foreign policy and trade policy can no longer operate in separate silos.
The temporary extension of AGOA is instructive for this very reason. Retain access, but only for a short time. This offers relief, not certainty. It keeps the door open to eligible African exporters, but it doesn’t create the kind of medium-term predictability that companies, investors and industrial planners typically require when making long-term sourcing, standards, production and market entry decisions. The question, therefore, is not whether AGOA remains useful. It does. The problem is that temporary preference is not the same as lasting strategy.
China’s new zero-tariff regime carries a different, but equally important, implication. It potentially expands access to one of the largest markets in the world. But access in itself does not guarantee an advantage. The countries best placed to benefit will be those able to meet standards, resolve logistical constraints, scale production and overcome dependence on raw materials towards higher value-added exports. The opening is real, but the distribution of profits will not be automatic. It will depend on the preparation. This is why China’s decision to remove tariffs on imports from 53 African countries should be read not simply as a concession, but as a test of the competitiveness of African exports.
This is where Nigeria’s strategic challenge becomes most acute. Nigeria is too large, too economically significant and too diplomatically important to approach passively. However, the task is not simply to seek access wherever it can be found. It’s about building the institutional means to use access well. Economic diplomacy should not be measured by the number of executives a country owns, or by how many openings are mentioned in official statements. It should be measured by assessing whether businesses can effectively enter markets, whether export volumes diversify, whether value added improves, and whether trade relationships deepen resilience rather than strengthen dependency.
Nigeria is not starting from scratch. The country has already taken important steps to strengthen its position in the AfCFTA, including publishing the interim schedule of tariff concessions in April 2025 and publishing a market intelligence tool to support exporters. This trajectory gained further expression on 9 March 2026 with the signing of the IATF2027 Host Country Agreement between Nigeria, Afreximbank, the African Union Commission and the AfCFTA Secretariat, confirming Lagos as the host of the Fifth Intra-African Trade Fair in November 2027.
President Tinubu has also publicly highlighted the importance of more efficient African borders and stronger intra-African trade under the AfCFTA. These are important foundations because they recognize a fundamental truth: in a more competitive business environment, information, connectivity and market access are not peripheral issues. They are part of the state’s capabilities.
The next step is to build a more integrated trade policy doctrine. This starts with aligning foreign policy, trade policy and industrial policy much more deliberately than before. As the external environment changes, whether through a brief extension of AGOA, a new Chinese tariff regime, or broader changes in global trade rules, the state should be able to quickly respond to a number of practical questions.
Which Nigerian sectors are best positioned for the affected markets? Which products can scale within a realistic time horizon? What standards, certifications or logistical barriers remain? Which trade missions and embassies should be tasked with targeted market opening work? A country that fails to answer these questions in an organized way will have difficulty converting preferences into outcomes.
A second requirement is stricter sectoral discipline. Not all export opportunities have the same strategic value. Nigeria should pay particular attention to sectors where expanded market access can support domestic improvement rather than simply accelerate the export of raw production. This means a greater focus on agricultural processing, light manufacturing, selected industrial products and minerals where downstream value addition is possible.
The point is not to reject raw material exports. This is to prevent favorable preferential regimes from further locking Nigeria into a pattern of exporting primary products while importing higher-value goods and skills.
A third requirement is institutional coordination. Commercial diplomacy cannot be entrusted to a single ministry, just as export preparation cannot be left entirely to private companies. This moment requires closer alignment between foreign affairs, trade and investment, finance, customs, standards authorities, export promotion institutions and industry regulators. This is especially important because the emerging trade environment is not just about tariffs. It also covers rules of origin, customs efficiency, certification, logistics, dispute resolution and the practical ability of companies to move goods reliably across borders.
There is also a broader African dimension that Nigeria should not neglect. If China is expanding duty-free access to 53 African countries while the United States is extending AGOA for only a limited period, African states will increasingly operate in a more competitive external environment in which market access is offered, adapted, and interpreted through broader geopolitical calculations. In such a context, intra-African trade becomes even more important, not as a slogan, but as a stabilizing basis. The stronger African trading platforms become, the less exposed African economies will be to political cycles and the uncertainty of the preferences of major external powers.
The broader lesson is that Nigeria should approach this moment neither with anxiety nor passivity, but with strategy. The AGOA extension and China’s decision to eliminate tariffs are not simply external announcements to be welcomed at a distance. They remind us that trade is now a more overtly strategic area of international politics. For Nigeria, the appropriate response is to move beyond viewing trade preferences as benefits in their own right and start treating them as tools to be integrated into a broader national strategy of export competitiveness, industrial empowerment and economic resilience. This is the real task facing the Nigerian government.
In the years to come, influence will not be measured by diplomatic visibility or political voice alone. It will also be measured by countries’ ability to convert a changing foreign trade environment into jobs, production capacity and sustained economic leverage. Nigeria has the size, market and diplomatic clout to do so. What matters now is the clarity and discipline with which it organizes itself for this purpose.
-Oshodi is the Senior Special Assistant to the Nigerian President on Foreign Affairs and Protocol
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